


A Twist of Fate

by Sroloc_Elbisivni



Series: Team Two Dads AU [1]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canonical Character Death, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-21
Updated: 2015-12-21
Packaged: 2018-05-08 01:53:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5478932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sroloc_Elbisivni/pseuds/Sroloc_Elbisivni
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Henry Allen is at the hospital the night Nora Allen is murdered, and everything changes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Twist of Fate

**Author's Note:**

> This, like so much else, is [Steph's](http://secretlystephaniebrown.tumblr.com) fault

Henry Allen is at the hospital the night Nora Allen is murdered.

He usually tries so hard to not to schedule appointments when he could be home eating dinner with his family and kissing Barry goodnight, but emergencies just don’t cooperate like that.

(he’s talked about it with Joe, sometimes—how it might be nice to have a nine-to-five job with no ‘on call’, to live by punching a clock instead of going when and where they’re needed. They agree, in the end, that it just wouldn’t be the same.)

He doesn’t wake up to a scream and a lightning storm inside his house; doesn’t lose the case for lack of alibi or other suspects.

No, instead he’s stripping off bloodstained gloves with practiced efficiency after spending fourteen hours reconstructing a woman’s collapsed lung when Dr. Chakrabarti knocks on the door of the staff room.

“Hank, there’s a cop here to see you. Detective West?”

“Joe?” He frowns. Why would Joe need to come to the hospital? Henry consults on cases, once in a very great while, but he doesn’t have the expertise in fields that would make it necessary for Joe to come to him first and at such an unusual time. “Can you tell him I’ll be right out?”

He cleans up a little faster than usual, wondering what could possibly be going on.

Joe is sitting on a bench in the waiting room, staring at the hat in his hands.

“Hey, Joe! Whaddya know?” Henry calls out in greeting, cheerfully optimistic.

When Joe looks up, the expression on his face makes Henry stop dead in his tracks.

_No…_

* * *

 

They drive back to the house with the sirens and lights on, and Henry leaps out of the car as soon as it pulls into the driveway, ignoring the _screech_ of abruptly stopping wheels to grab Barry, shock blanket and all, up into his arms.

Later, after Barry has given his statement (Henry hasn’t put him down yet; he isn’t sure if he ever will again) and Joe has expressed appropriate skepticism (but since Barry was found two miles away and there was no one else around, it’s all they have to go on for now) Henry sits down on the front steps and keeps holding onto Barry.

(Nora’s murder will go unsolved—truly unsolved, not merely falsely resolved—for years.)

The body has been identified (oh God, _Nora_ ), the crime scene (their _house)_ has been closed off, all the cops have left, and Henry Allen has no idea what to do now.

“Henry.”

Almost all the cops. Joe is standing in front of him when Henry looks up, the other man’s face immeasurably worn and sad.

“You and Barry are staying with me and Iris tonight.”

“No, Joe—you don’t have to do that, we can find a hotel—”

“Like hell. We don’t know who this guy is or what he wants. He could have been after you. He could still be after Barry.”

Those words—that thought, of Barry _alone,_ without Nora, without him, or worse, too pale and too still, another body for Henry to ID—that makes his legs move without him even thinking about it, until Barry is tucked safe in the backseat of the squad car and Henry is sitting in the front, having forgotten how he got there.

They ride in silence, until Joe looks in the mirror and lets out a weak chuckle. “You know, he and Iris have been begging me for months to ride back there. I kept telling them that if they kept asking, I was gonna make sure they got the full tour. Same one all the other criminals get.”

Henry usually manages a laugh for Joe’s jokes, but this time, it’s all he can do to muster a shaky grin.

The silence remains unbroken for the rest of the way to Joe’s house.

 

* * *

 

The two Allen boys stay for a week, until Barry really can’t miss any more school and the house has been cleaned up and no trace of the imaginary criminal has been found. Then they go…back to the house.

 Henry thinks he manages to do pretty good, but after another week in which neither he nor Barry set foot in the living room and have a lot of midnight feasts because they forget things like dinner are actually necessary and maybe he shows up to work in the same clothing three days in a row and Barry spends at least that much time doing the same at school and they both eat only pickles for lunch because he forgets to go shopping, Joe shows up at the door.

“O-kay, so it looks like this’ll have to be longer than a week.”

“I can _handle it._ ”

In retrospect, that statement would probably have gone over much better if it hadn’t been punctuated by the smoke alarm going off as the spaghetti caught on fire.

Henry buys a storage unit to put everything in while he apartment-hunts and he and Barry move back in with the Wests.

Laundry keeps getting done on time, grocery shopping happens on a much more reasonable basis, Barry stops crawling into bed with him at night, and eventually, housing ads from the newspaper migrate from the top of the table’s paper explosion to the bottom, and then to the recycling. Barry’s shoes start turning up in odd places, Iris stops calling Henry “Mr. Allen,” Joe’s pens turn up in the pockets of his scrubs, and Henry gives into the inevitable and he and Joe argue until he wins and starts paying half the mortgage.

And then, well…there’s really no going back.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Dr. Chakrabarti is a cameo from iZombie.  
> This will become a series when I have the time, eventually featuring shenanigans reminiscent of the Parent Trap.  
> [I have a Tumblr!](http://sroloc--elbisivni.tumblr.com) Asking me about this verse may serve as excellent motivation to write more.


End file.
